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The Rise Of The Artist

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Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#111
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the time was probably in 1970. While you have a much larger audience today, and computers have kicked the artistic potential of individuals into overdrive, I think the main factor in a healthy arts economy is a wealthy society. The America of the 70s hit around its peak wealth per person - it has been going down ever since. I don't think the advances in artist productivity trump the fact people make significa…

Although I didn't cite any stats (google "art market booming" if interested) it's not an opinion. There has been an art boom over the past decades, and there are more artists making a lot more money than ever before. Certainly more than in the 1970s.

Thats probably because of the booming inequality that means some people have a lot of money. It is unclear that art is becoming more democratic or widespread other than this.

Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#112

Picture a writer. You've seen him countless times in tv shows and movies. Brow furrowed, pencil gripped tight between teeth, hunched over a typewritter, tearing pages out and throwing them into an overflowing waste basket, staring at the ceiling praying for inspiration. Picture a developer. Brow furrowed, hunched over a keyboard, the room is dark but he glows from the light of the monitor, a pile of empty mountain de…

I don't think you can compare coding and writing so closely. I don't know about you, but I've never thought of coding as involving much creativity . Or is your point that good writers and artists and such are not actually being creative?

It depends on the ‘level’ at which you employ this creativity. To me, neither coding nor writing requires much creativity at a very low level (think inside a function or a paragraph), but it does require creativity as much as the ability to analytically extract suitable abstractions at a higher level.

That is, once you created (using your creativity) some sort of flow-chart for either your programme or your story, you will be able to fill in the remaining bits using strictly analytical thought without much creativity: Once you created pseudocode for Dijkstra’s algorithm, you don’t need much creativity to implement it. Similarly, once you set up the story of your genius cheating the devil, you don’t need much creativity to fill in the gaps.

The quality of this gap-filling will still greatly depend on your skill as a coder/writer – making the best use of the language you have – but this is not a necessarily a creative process, unless your language is ill-suited to the task and you need to create it on-the-fly, c.f. Shakespeare or K&R. Neither Goethe nor Thomas Mann made up many words, but only used their tools at a very high level and are still considered among the best writers in the world. Similarly, Linus didn’t invent C, but he used it to build a very complex system (or randomly ended up at one by continuous evolution, though that’s another discussion).

The above obviously only applies to writing/coding, and I would assume that the same goes for composing – even more so, as you can choose a particular set of rules (harmonic, atonal, you-name-it) and each individual note follows from the previous with little choice. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is probably a good example for this.

On the other hand, at least to the uninitiated (read: me), painting and sculpting appears much more ‘creative’ and incomparable to coding/writing/composing.

Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#115
post #90
post #50

This talk of "right-brain" revolution has become so popular that no one even realizes the fundamental irony of it all. The fallacy that the "creative" arts have been under appreciated in society is the largest piece of bollocks I've ever heard. I voluntarily teach math at a school here in MN, so i get some insight into what's going on at the schools and the fact is, while the politicians and corporations are sounding…

>That "left brain/right brain" business is the stupidest, most egregious display of a lack of understanding of basic neuroscience. This is the first thing that I wanted to say, and I'm glad to see it already represented in this thread. The only myths that get to me as much as perpetuation of the Left- vs. Right-brained business are statements that assume a zero-sum model of economics/trade, or statements that imply a…

It's a more academic version of "So are you a dog person, or a cat person? Oh you're X? That means, you like to Y and and hate it when people Z!"

Another thing: generations. "Generation X does this-and-such while the Millennials are like so..." Go fuck yourself. I and most of the people I know from either "generation" are like neither of those things.

Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#116
post #77

Picture a writer. You've seen him countless times in tv shows and movies. Brow furrowed, pencil gripped tight between teeth, hunched over a typewritter, tearing pages out and throwing them into an overflowing waste basket, staring at the ceiling praying for inspiration. Picture a developer. Brow furrowed, hunched over a keyboard, the room is dark but he glows from the light of the monitor, a pile of empty mountain de…

Programming these days isn't really like what you describe, unless perhaps you are an indie game dev. Most software development nowadays requires extensive collaboration with other programmers, interacting with a lot of non-programming people and building on top of existing systems, rather than creating something from scratch.

The creativity comes in when you need to decide on the most efficient way to do something. And you are always creating something from scratch, otherwise you could just reuse the existing solution.

Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#117

Picture a writer. You've seen him countless times in tv shows and movies. Brow furrowed, pencil gripped tight between teeth, hunched over a typewritter, tearing pages out and throwing them into an overflowing waste basket, staring at the ceiling praying for inspiration. Picture a developer. Brow furrowed, hunched over a keyboard, the room is dark but he glows from the light of the monitor, a pile of empty mountain de…

I don't think you can compare coding and writing so closely. I don't know about you, but I've never thought of coding as involving much creativity . Or is your point that good writers and artists and such are not actually being creative?

You learn grammar and syntax to compose sentences telling a machine that computes to do something. Over and over again.

Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#118
In an article about the importance of creativity, it's sad to see a quote promoting drawing over coding.

To me, the use of computers to advance art, taking out as many steps as possible between idea and artwork, is the most exciting way to think about visual art. (I know the article didn't mention visual art specifically, but it seemed to be implied.)

Anyway, the site I've been working on for the past year is based on drawing. You might be interested in trying it out if learning to draw is a goal for you, or if you have ideas related to visual art.

http://www.sketchport.com/

Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#119
post #50

This talk of "right-brain" revolution has become so popular that no one even realizes the fundamental irony of it all. The fallacy that the "creative" arts have been under appreciated in society is the largest piece of bollocks I've ever heard. I voluntarily teach math at a school here in MN, so i get some insight into what's going on at the schools and the fact is, while the politicians and corporations are sounding…

Very well put. As someone who works currently at the intersection of technology and the arts, I know plenty of people who've worked at a high level in both camps. Because of my STEM background, occasionally others are surprised that I don't struggle with the creative aspects of my role. But to me there is no distinction, it is all just different types of problem solving.

Being a skilled artist is 90% a combination of technical ability acquired through repetitive practice, and a strong sense of aesthetics. The vast majority of creative work is just combining existing ideas in new ways. Genuine inspiration, where a completely new idea is added to melting pot happens very rarely. There are plenty of artists for whom I would question whether this happens at all.

Re: The Rise Of The Artist

#120
post #50

This talk of "right-brain" revolution has become so popular that no one even realizes the fundamental irony of it all. The fallacy that the "creative" arts have been under appreciated in society is the largest piece of bollocks I've ever heard. I voluntarily teach math at a school here in MN, so i get some insight into what's going on at the schools and the fact is, while the politicians and corporations are sounding…

> or even the swimmer (did I mention I'm learning to swim? I wholeheartedly recommend Terry Laughlin's Total Immersion technique. It emphasizes swimming like a fish, stroke length, low stroke count, zen-like being in the moment. The beginning drills emphasize basic buoyancy and balance techniques - and the arm propeller-based swimmers will look at you strange when you practice them in a public pool - but keep with it…

I second that. I also took proper swimming education in my twenties, and followed up with this technique. Once you get the hang of it, the stable, long distance rhythm you can get is amazing.

Side note: learning to swim, full technique, is something you can do at any age, very rewarding result wise[1]. Kudos on your decision.

[1] Except if you have some hard to overcome fear of water. It's not a roadblock, but expect it to take time.

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